Spring Springing

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - A book I read a few years ago advised, "When you see a good shot, grab it. It won't be there when you come back."

Most of the time I shoot places, not people. It might seem I should have much leisure to catch the images I like. Those who shoot people must be quick to catch the telling gesture, but the landscape, in most people's eyes, just sits there. However, there may be a thousand tiny factors that lead to distinguishing a "composition," from the infinity of random "snapshots," that lie about wherever one points the camera. Most of the time the "compositions," only emerge in the course of my scouting and scoping walks. I was reminded this past week of just how transient some of those compositions may be. Even when the shot lies beneath a totally clear sky, and one can return at the same time of day, the shot of yesterday may be gone tomorrow.

It's not that the bicycle is likely to move any time soon. It's probably been sitting and rusting there for a dozen years. I shot this image early yesterday morning, but my reason for rising at 5:15 to catch the morning sun was to re-shoot two other images I had taken a few days earlier at the same time in the morning. Both were striking compositions, well worth the effort of re-tracking them. I'd even spent time the afternoon before trying to locate and mark the exact spots from which they had been taken. I didn't expect to be able to shoot in the afternoon what had been successful at sunrise, but I wanted to be able to find the location quickly the next morning as morning light is always fleeting. I re-scouted the locations with some difficulty, but I was reasonably certain I had found them.

These were long shots through my telephoto lens that compressed elements separated by as much as 800 or 900 feet. The shots would have been beautiful had they not been technically flawed. Whether wind or carelessness caused the blurriness, I couldn't use them that way, and they struck me as sufficiently unusual sightings that they were worth stalking a second time. What I had not expected was that in the few intervening days the thin spring leafing would change everything.

The chief culprits were two background trees. They shouldn't really have mattered; they blocked little. One had just leafed. The other that had frail green leaves before, now was covered with white flowers. However, suddenly the two trees claimed undo focus and a few details they blocked turned out to be small but necessary points of interest. Had I not seen them previously there would have been nothing to grab my eye; the compositions, so stunning a few days earlier, were completely gone. I snapped as best I could being certain there was no shake, but back at my computer the new shots were failures. This is why it is so essential to blank the mind of expectations and always shoot at the edge of the moment.

Lesson relearned: When you see a good shot, grab it. It won't be there when you come back. That's why I spent 30 minutes of my precious sunrise shoot refining this shot of the great silos atop True Mountain.

A Starry Night

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The two silos are side by side and to casual glance, snug against the end wall of the barn. In fact, I found there was a narrow passage between them. It was strewn with debris and will probably be overgrown in a month. Once through this channel I found myself in a musty, triangular space between silos and the barn. To my left and right were narrow passages that hugged the barn wall and led back out. In front was access to the barn. When I turned and looked, I saw the silos had been outfitted on this side with iron levers and handles that worked wooden gates, the patented hardware of the Unadilla Silo Company. I had entered the inner sanctum.

I couldn't help but think of the back-breaking task of shoveling the silage from here to the cows inside the barn. At least the whole process had been designed to let gravity do a bit of the work. I have much to learn about how this really did work - a note for my next visit.

The appliances that operated the gates were rusted and decayed and too fragile to fool with. I could just about find space to poke my head in, and it took an awkward twist to look up and take in the space. This was the belly of the beast or at least one of them. I gazed in dank & awe and then quickly but carefully unscrewed myself. Definite possibilities! ...and impossibilities. I thought about the impossibility of doing "the silo twist," with a camera. Worse yet, it was dark and there was no way I could use a tripod. The camera would have to be rock steady. I reached deep inside, guessed at the trajectory, and braced myself against something smelly. Instant digital feedback at least allowed me to check that I got the shots I wanted eventually. I find, however, a few of the "rejects," seem to me now like great serendipities.

As it turns out, the silos are not so old as I had thought, but I would guess wooden silos had a relatively limited life. The Unadilla Silo Company which, by the way, still exists, kindly and amazingly took less than 24 hours to locate sales documents showing three silos shipped in 1950. I'm not sure what the working life of a silo is, but these were undoubtedly replacement silos. In 1950 it cost $45 to ship a large silo such as this from Unadilla, NY, to True Mt., Conn.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Sadly, jpg reduction lacks the great detail of the full-resolution original which clearly reveals the bolts and fasteners in the apex of the silo roof. In this reduction the structure itself is dim. If possible, view this image full screen and against a dark background. Turn down/off nearby lamps.

Watchful Eyes

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: In three visits to the farm atop True Mountain I took almost 900 photographs. That seems like a lot even to me, but it is a big place, and there is much to learn and even more to decide. There are 14 or 15 buildings in the farmstead cluster. The farmstead stands amid fields bounded by stone walls, and there are beautiful hillside vistas on all sides. After three days of scouting, I still haven't "covered all the angles," and many shots were taken when the light was wrong for the purpose of recalling possibilities - angles to revisit or ignore. Most importantly as I scout and shoot I find the wonders and rhythms of the place, and they often invoke feelings. With any luck I've made some images that communicate some of this.

Reviewing so many shots of the same place at once begs certain questions. The same barns, many angles, near or far, three days, varying weather, sunrise and sunset - so many possibilities - after you've shot them all, how do you chose? In fact, one might ignore the barns completely and shoot the avian bacchanalia in the surrounding fields. With many warm, sunny options from which to chose, I beg patience while I capture stop-motion images of the slow-motion passing of these grand, old structures. If they could speak to us now, what would they say? Perhaps these photo images are an offering to the muses that abide here.

The Farm Atop True Mountain

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY

What is it about the great farmstead atop True Mountain that I find so compelling?

Certainly, it is the silence. By that, I don't mean that all is quiet. Especially now, as spring is in full fling, the avian choirs at dawn and dusk are glorious and loud. No, it is the silence inside where the gates and chains in the milking parlor no longer jingle, and the skuffing field mouse along a purlin seems loud. But other farmsteads are similarly still.

It is also the great age of the silence. For a hundred years from 1860 the busi-ness of the farm was handed from father to son: Fields were plowed, cows were milked, horses were shod atop True Mountain, until in 1960 it all stopped. Then the scurrying began. Vines slipped under the brittle, shrunken barn boards. Pigeons nested in the two great silos. Windows slipped and shards of broken glass were found. The rafters belonged to the mudwasps and hornets, the sparrows and bats. The chimneys, through fifty unheated seasons of wet and dry, crumbled without a sound.

It is also the buildings themselves that amplify the silence - so many brittle facades that give form to barn yard and door yard, to the ladies' flower gardens and the men's vegetable gardens. And from the courtyards and gardens old farm roads reach in all directions to the fields and the pastures and the orchards, and water flows in channels and clay pipes carefully designed to fill the cow pond and keep the farm roads dry. The tumble of buildings gives form to the daily routine. I guess at the purpose of each structure and speculate on the activities of the day. On the way from the cow barn to the stable I stop at the blacksmith's shop or peek in at the chicken house. I wonder if more corn is needed up at the farmstand by the road or if the barnyard needs shoveling. When I look again the dooryard has lost all focus, and the barnyard is dry and tidy, the vegetable garden is all weed and the outhouse door is always shut.

Most of all it is the two great wooden silos that hug the farmstead and tower above it. The wind of fifty winters and the sun of fifty summers have dessicated the joists and the planking of the barns since they fell silent. Nails rattle like loose teeth. The great iron belts of the silos fall slack as the boards of the silos contract their girth, yet the great skeletons stand as if almost ready for another day of chores to begin. When I climb inside one of the silos I see stamped onto the frame: "Unadilla Silo Company, Unadilla, NY, Silos & Tanks - Stanchions & Partitions. pat. 228904."

Venerate these old barns, eggshell-thin and brittle,
Even as the season springs its fling, unflings its spring,
and around the crumbling cow stalls green things slither toward light.

Light and Water

HENRY DAVID THOREAU: "The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side the inert bank,for the sun acts on one side first,and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me, had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally, whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat (leibo, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; lobos, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words)...."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: One who wants to photograph the land follows the seasons. This is the season of water and its cycles and its endless capacity for transformation and metaphor. I've been following its currents since the big rains came in March that rutted my road and finished the work of the thaw: I went to Great Falls on the Housatonic to shoot the water's torrent, and to Collinsville where the Farmington River was, long ago, divided into narrow channels so its energy could be engaged in the building of a nation, and finally, after days of warm sun, the water led me here, and it feels like a beginning. To say more is to say too much.

Bogwatch

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The frogs are not ready yet. Their dwarfed legs have no feel of the land, but much is stirring at the bottom of the bog. I shot photos here most of last week. New leaves and insects unfolded simultaneously, and lurking down under are broad, dim lily leaves silent, waiting until the water thickens.

Soon the green mantle will form on these slow pools, the blazing grasses will turn glaucous, and low brush will block the long, deep views. It's only now, at this season, that one can look into its depths and get a mental foothold on its various corners.

I was about to add that it is only now that it is so photogenic; that it won't be so again for another year. However, I remembered images - (1), (2) - made here last fall. It's hard to know how the wheels will spin.

Wiser to keep all beauty options open, and maybe it's not about bog beauty. Some correspondents reacted to yesterday's TODAY'S, by suggesting it was not about a swamp at all. One close friend sent these delightful words:

"It looks like you went to heaven and sent back a picture. The white things sticking up are the other souls."

The thought is welcome but, I think, not for me to say. I just keep watching the bog.

Greening of Great Hollow Swamp

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY

This sun-cooked stew is first to green
and teem.
Fortunate road, a causeway really,
across Great Hollow Swamp
that lets me invade these otherwise remote nurseries.

The dark eye of a black grackle
meets mine,
Before the brake is even set.
Will he sit along the branch and watch
After I've opened the door and unpacked my camera?

Along the power line swallows,
posted sentries,
silently watch to the culvert.
There, wheeling overhead,
the swallow squadrons buzz me - champions to chicks unhatched.

Across the road where the culvert spills,
another pool,
"b'deee-b'deee."
to my ear, a friendly greeting.
I wish I knew the names of all who live here.

Behind him a long channel
ripples - deep
through skeletal thicket of ash-colored maple.
Floating low above the emerald carpet,
another heron glides to a more private bog.

At midday the redwings watch and cluck
my passing.
But now at sunset from every dry branch,
atop every rotted stump
They arch their awful warpaint and trumpet to the glory of the setting sun.

Where's Waldo

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I need to remember to walk quietly. I crossed the crest of the hay field, and sparrows foraging in the grass made their guilty escape. "Slow down, walk lightly," I told myself. "Meeker Swamp is a quiet spot; it's best to go as a swamp thing. Places removed from our daily rush can be skittish."

Then, rounding the bend of the trail with the swamp now in view the bony, hunched thing inflated like a child's kite, and in two long flaps was over into another part of the swamp, safe from my view. I'm not certain why I want to catch the great blue heron in flight or if the kind of shot I want is possible. Can a still image catch the slow beat of those majestic wings gathering air or the slow stride of the long neck gliding across the water?

Such shots take planning. My lens is habitually set for things that stand still. Everything must change when stalking the great blue. I zoomed my lens to 400mm scanned the trees across the swamp for compositions, and a tree limb turned its head. At first I couldn't believe it. There was my hunch-shouldered friend stationed a very safe distance across the pool like a wizened prophet.

There was no lake, but I wasn't about to be too picky. For twenty minutes he did little more than turn his head or shift his weight. I moved less. Twenty-five minutes later the blackbirds arrived, it seemed like dozens of them, to perch on nearby tree limbs and taunt me. One can only withstand their yattering provocations so long. It was in that moment that I turned to see how close the blackbird at my back had ventured. When I turned back the prophet had gone.

At the Edge

HENRY DAVID THOREAU: "In wildness is the preservation of the world."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Every serious swamp is a no man's land. One city-bound correspondent replied to yesterday's TODAY'S with amazement at the abundance of life to be found in a swamp. Those of us drawn to the strange beauty of swamplands usually can do little more than creep around its edges. Occasionally we may find a swamp with a waterway that we can paddle, but we're still just edgefarers by a land of thick vegetation and mucky bottoms. The waters are usually too shallow and choked with vegetation for paddling and just downright unfriendly. Such are the swamps of home.

Although a no-man's land, the swamp is not a wasteland. We walk through pleasant forests and marvel at nature's abundance, but in truth it is the swamps that support the diversity on which we thrive. That's what brings me to these lively edges; when healthy, they buzz and sing and refresh more than spirit. What lives and breeds in the swamp supports life well beyond the swamp. When the swamp dies, lives change in places far distant.

Some argue the swamps around here were once rich farmland. A farmer who once worked the land that is now Meeker Swamp told me about pulling trout from Bee Brook where the swanp now lies. It was farmers who kept the streams clear in order to harvest crops in the rich soils of these bottom lands. In a spot near Meeker Swamp there were once not only fields and livestock but also a brick work. There are probably many chimneys still in use made of clay from near this swamp. The old road to the brick works led through the center of the current swamp. As farming has vanished the beavers, always eager for new territory, have returned. The brick works is long gone and only one field near the swamp is still used to harvest hay.

And so it was that I watched as the beavers of Meeker Swamp ferried tree limbs from the upstream portion of the swamp downstream through a maze of narrow passageways to reinforce the long dam they had built. In winter when the swamp was frozen I walked the line of the dam and marveled at its incredible length. It was built by just one family of beavers, their lodge in the middle about fifteen feet from where I stood. Behind the dam they had created, insects breed and feed a rich fishery which the beavers happily share with birds and other creatures too numerous to list. In another era we could afford to lose wetlands to farming. Today the nibble of subdivisions leaves little place for abundant nature. We are only just now beginning to appreciate the ways our own survival may rest on the health of the swamps of home.

Revival at Meeker Swamp

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: From the viewing platform at Meeker Swamp it is quickly clear that the soup is astir. How different it looks in this shot taken Saturday from this late autumn photo published previously!

I watched the swamp for over two hours, and it wasn't just birds and buds that made the difference. Several times as I stood and waited one of the beavers cut a wake from the far northern section of the swamp, past the beaver lodge about 15 feet from the platform and off to the most southerly section of the swamp. I'm not sure what he was up to, but he was as regular as a ferry. Meanwhile a goose sat patiently on her nest without moving even as the beaver passed just a few feet from her. A pair of mallards also passed, and a great blue heron watched and waited atop a distant stump. Sunset from the Meeker Swamp viewing platform is one of the great sights of the region. I'll be heading back regularly.

This shot lies midway between the texture shot posted yesterday and the grand landscapes I also like to compose. It isn't often in this kind of situation that I can find the right elements to impose a bit of depth on an otherwise flat scene.

Painting Spring

CLAUDE MONET: “For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.”

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: On Saturday, when I took this picture, spring became general. Until then there were only shoots from the soil and occasional spots along the hillsides where an occasional tree blushed, but Saturday on every hill I saw the faint unfurling of the painterly season climbing up to the ridge line. No leaf had fully opened, but each tree that had begun to wake dabbed color across the gray skeletal hillsides of winter. It was as if the spirit of Monet had just passed by. The frustrated painter in me is always drawn to such painterly display. No other season can match it.

North Meadow #8

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:

As crouching spiders watched and waited
bees, and butterflies, dragon flies and hummingbird moths
grew cold and dry as dust.
The webs were empty.
Then they were gone.
There is no North Meadow. Perhaps there never was one.

I believe in wandering. This will be the last North Meadow photo that I will post on TODAY'S for awhile, anyhow. Is it effervescence or rigor mortis? I'm feeling out of touch with frost. The last few days have been warm and sunny, and I've repeatedly caught myself trying to photograph the first blushes of spring.

This journey through past work provides a needed point of reference to my current shooting - helps me see the path I've followed from there to here, though I continue without a plan, simply wandering to see what catches my eye. And what catches my eye changes my eye and sometimes changes my direction. I believe in wandering. Today also the song birds were back.

Ministries of Frost

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:
My final shoot at North Meadow before it was
mowed down, was early morning, October 31, 2005.
Shards of glass distilled from dew
touching spiky seedheads to whiteness,
and the ground crunched as I walked.
The air was crystal crisp; it froze my breath
so that I had to keep wiping the camera back to see
the images as I shot, and fingers stinging, numb. It was
my first lesson in the ways of cold-weather shooting.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE:
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

September Trapeze, North Meadow

The Spider's Web

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.

Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.

-- E. B. White

Color Field

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The more I visited North Meadow, the more I saw and wanted to photograph. Along the path near North Meadow were grasses. With the setting sun behind them, the spiked seedheads became tiny lanterns. In some areas they glowed yellow. Nearby a patch might glow orange (as above) or pink or even purplish. In one spot the seedheads of different colors had integrated the same patch. I angled my shots toward the sun to maximize the iridescence even though all the rules of photography tell you not to shoot into the sun. When my first shots were spoiled by lens flare I went back and chose angles more carefully and waved my hat to shield the lens as best I could.

Along the perimeter where the path wrapped around the meadow the abundance of shapes and colors blossomed into a floral cornucopia, and I repeatedly tried to compose its textures and colors into images. Further off whole patches of similar plants made broad splashes of color as if luminous paint had been spilled there. But it was the dead corn stalks in the midst of all this that kept drawing me back.

They were expressionistic slashes that contrasted with this tapestry of nature's plenty. I thought of Edvard Munch scraping the paint from the portrait of his sick sister, his first important work, that he struggled with for over a year until the rude scrapings of his palette knife scarred it to the brutal roughness that conveyed his raw pain. The feeling I was after in the meadow was of death and life always coexisting, though I would not want to lean too heavily on that as interpretation.

In any case, I was only recently out of the woods and not used to shooting meadows. I tried shooting the corn stalks where they stood in serried rows like headstones in a cemetery. I shot them when dragon flies rested like tiny pennants at the top of each stalk. I shot at dawn when everything became eerie and at dusk when brilliant warm light cast outlining shadows and bathed everything in warm luxuriance. I tried juxtaposing the blackened, dead corn stalks against the green background of the new season's crop. I shot from high up and from low down.

Eventually, the shots I liked best flattened the meadow into something like a color field painting. Then in late fall they harvested the new corn. I was there when they plowed North Meadow under. The new plan called for growing grasses for hay, and they'd decided the soggy bottom of North Meadow was suitable for that purpose; it was integrated back into the agricultural field. When the new season arrived I found myself addicted to shooting meadow textures, but the corn stalks of North Meadow had vanished forever.

The Great Reach

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: If there is a god it is to be found in planetary consciousness, the earth as a giant organism always reaching out, always experimenting to propagate that consciousness more efficiently over an ever-wider territory.

As soon as I retired I expanded my walking regimen, but it was only gradually that photography began to compete. My weekly goal was to walk 20 to 25 miles while the weather was decent; I had to keep moving. A mile from my house I could drop into forest trails and walk all day before remembering that every plot of forest is today encircled by roads and civilization. However, to take pictures I needed to stop and contemplate, and I began to realize that the best pictures were to be found in the open of meadows, pastures, and wetlands where the pulse of life beats even more ferociously.

By the time I discovered North Meadow I had changed my 4 megapixel, pocket, point & shoot 4300 for a digital, D70 SLR, and I was now lugging a backpack of gear, a tripod, and two lenses on every hike, and my hikes were frequently truncated into shoots. The week before I discovered North Meadow I had been shoulder deep in a meadow of milkweed. I was humming along with the bees and photographing butterflies with my long lens. I felt energized by the intensity of that life buzzing all around me and followed the feeding of the butterflies under the hot sun until I had filled my memory cards and grown quite thirsty.

Then I found North Meadow where those dead, dry, blackened corn stalks from the previous season served as the scaffolding for a new summer of reaching and blossoming. They were quite striking, death markers standing in rows and slowly being overtaken by new life. In the absence of a new cultivated crop, a riot of flowering vegetation was thriving. Buds of all shapes and colors opened into flowers, eyes that looked upward and followed the progress of the sun through the day. Vines climbed the brittle corn stalks, then surmounted the top and cast out new shoots reaching for any support to get yet higher and claim a greater advantage in their quest for the sun's energy. And dragon flies, bees, butterflies, moths, humming birds, sparrows all fed on those high-energy nectars and then flew off to sow their own seeds and sometimes also seeds they had digested.

There, in the middle of the meadow I was surrounded by vegetable consciousness. My own consciousness is merely extension of that consciousness, made possible by and nourished on the fruits and seeds of the meadow and the things that feed on the meadow. It is all the result of evolutionary consciousness rising up out of the earth, seeking better ways to scatter the seeds of life beyond the oceans and across the land. The consciousness that flows through me has reached out and evolved over millions of years and is reaching still. There in North Meadow where one season was so visibly rising on the bones of another I found a vivid image of my deepest beliefs about life. It was a discovery and a visual delight that led me back day after day to the end of the season. It was the first of many such sites I would consciously visit, study, and photograph repeatedly.

Jewels of North Meadow

CLAUDE MONET: "To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at."

North Meadow Lights

EDGAR DEGAS: "It is essential to do the same subject over again, ten times, a hundred times. Nothing in art must seem accidental, not even movement."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: There are few artists in whose compositions I take more interest than Edgar Degas. It is not that Degas drew inspiration from photographic composition, but that his compositions are so smart - inevitable and telling. I recently came upon his admonition to, "...do the same subject." It is a practice I've followed since the summer of 2005. What else did Degas say on this subject, and what were his reasons for advocating such doggedness?

North Meadow was one of two sites I consciously reworked in the summer of 2005. Before that summer I'd never watched so closely as a single site changed under different lighting and over different seasons. I didn't set out to study and compare in that manner, but the practice made me aware that there are not dozens but hundreds of significant variations (at least!) in the way light interacts with the landscape. Anyone who sets out to photograph, "the grand landscape," must, before all else, watch the light and respond to its many moods. The photographer selects his shots from what the light has made possible.

Some of the "North Meadow," photographs were exhibited in the first exhibition of The Camera's Eye.

More Degas quotes

Sunrise at North Meadow

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:
There is no North Meadow. Perhaps there never was one.
It was a corn field that ripened and never got cut.
The soil was poor, the ears poorly formed or not at all.
When the crop was cleared to the south and the east,
the rows of corn in North Meadow were left standing.
That was in 2004.

I came on that phantom corn field in 2005.
From the defeat of agriculture came a riot of nature.
The grasses and wildflowers that grew in North Meadow that summer
were unlike those in any neighboring field or pasture.
Spiders built giant webs between the blackened corn stalks
just where the flowers were brightest and sweetest,
and vines twirled round in their climb to the sun.

As crouching spiders watched and waited
bees, and butterflies, dragon flies and hummingbird moths,
proboscis erect,
plundered sweet blossoms
for succulent nectars.
Centipedes became millipedes and millipedes metamorphosed to trillipedes.
And swallows and catbirds fed and got fat like crows.
There is no North Meadow. Perhaps there never was one.

Fog Passing over the Hump of Spring Hill

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - Uses for dawn:

At dawn after new snow the world is on vacation and the roads and driveways have not yet been unpacked.

At sunrise near the water there are sometimes two suns.

The mists of dawn make air visible.

Sometimes it rises, and sometimes it falls, and sometimes it hovers and sometimes it sweeps.

It pulls the eye down the longest valleys or divides the hills into receding tiers.

There are at sunrise, so I'm told, little cat feet and rosy fingers.

And in spring mighty feathered choirs proclaim the aurora,

And marching turkeys halt and fan their desires.

And listless butterflies still pillowed on moist blossoms are too sleepy to fly from my lens.

Nearby spiders' webs are lit like roadside billboards. It is a test, only a test. Once the sun comes up they're dangerously invisible.

And I've seen on frosty mornings, especially in fall, diamonds tossed across the meadow and thistle and alfafa bejeweled,

Tomorrow the moon rises at 5:55 AM and the sun rises 35 minutes later. Is there a use for that?

Except for autumn frost and winter snow, until the temperature flirts with 40° F. there's little at sunrise to tempt me from bed.

The Old Cairn

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I confess it; I do not catch sunrise often. The last time I was out early was the last big snow event - early March. Yesterday's note initially had a sentence to explain that the photo was taken last spring and that I was posting it in anticipation and impatience for the meadows' return.

It takes a special reason to coax me from bed early. Spiders will do it. So will snow or any atmospherics such as the special fogs of September and October. So will the prospect of weeds studded with the ice crystals of an early frost. As soon as a bit of the foliage is back I will be watching for the right weather condition to head for Little Pond where the spring trumpeting of the red-wing blackbirds emerges from the early morning pond mist and rattles my bones. There's nothing quite like it. For now I'm sleeping in.

As to the old cairn, I've asked around, and nobody seems to know when it was built or why just there. It's not the highest point. The farm at my back dates to pre Revolutionary times. Perhaps the cairn marks the site of a bloody battle or at a later date where a favorite bull breathed his last. It's easy to think of such land as primeval and forget that much history has passed over it.

The vineyard in the foreground is new. In these fields dairy farming has given way to vino.

The cairn was also noted in a previous posting.

The Greening of the Spirit

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I believe in walking. Whatever it is that inspires the birds to sing their most remarkable arias in the cool morning air, fills me with similar buoyancy at dawn. I guess some reading this will have a very different opinion of the AM. Except in winter, the damp, cool air just at sunrise and immediately after is sweeter to me than coffee. It's hard at 6 AM (or earlier) to drag myself from a warm bed and bed-mate, but once I am out and marching across a hillside, the birth trauma is well on the way to being forgotten.

"Buoyancy," is exactly the word, even the grass stems stand up taller then --and "exuberance," a force rising out of the earth and animating all things, and it lifts me too. I don't pray and I don't believe in any goodness that makes things right, whatever right might mean. All that matters is here right now, but walking in the early morning I know I am in touch with the prime mover. One can feel it draw all things toward the sun. I'm sure others find it at other times of day or night and in many places. As a child of New York City, I can feel it in the city as well, though it is not as strong; so I think the sensation is more than the joy emanating from the choir of meadow birds. To those who may argue it is purely neural - perhaps everything is neural - I feel, therefore I am. The fact remains that it is a force that counters cynicism, battles pain, and seeks life.

If one is at all reflective, one draws on it to move and direct all important endeavors and wonders how to make it accessible to all, an equal access resource?

The Falling Leaf, the Sprouting Stalk

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: First it was the leg of my "indestructible," Bogen-Manfrotto tripod that fell into pieces. Then my pedometer turned into dashes that looked like DNA, and I thought maybe I'd run out of steps. Then, Monday, my camera blitzed just as the sky filled with clouds painted by Magritte. I remain undaunted. (Yes, Eddie!) So after all that, why should my first outing lead to a cemetery, and why had so many birds, fortunately no crows, come down to perch and watch me shoot? Was I tresspassing? ...enough to make one superstitious, and I wondered: If I wasn't supposed to be here doing this, where was I supposed to be and what was I supposed to do? Perhaps the birds would be good enough to answer.

It is an old family cemetery overlooking a farmstead. Descendants of the first farmers still run the farm today, and all of those who ran it then now lie here. I was hoping to find a picture that might say something like that. I'd tried in the fall before all the leaves were off the trees, but the angles were too tight. They were only a bit better today, still no-go. At least I couldn't see them. Then a small flock of sheep, potentially ideal players for the story I wanted to tell, trotted down to graze in the farthest field. They had to be placed just so or the composition would be cluttered. As soon as I'd moved so, they'd spy a juicier bit of grass and discompose me. Following "so" kept me hopping. The sheep were merciless.

MENTAL NOTE: How can I rig the remote so it hangs where I expect it when I reach to shoot? It was so nice when Nikon built in a wireless trigger. Then I might have had sheep.

I left the cemetery intent on walk, but soon I was stopped by reddish brush I'd never noticed back in the pasture. A horse fence cast a strong shadow; fence and shadow made a good leading line into the composition where a rock outcropping caught good side light. The whole composition set up fine, but I didn't push the shutter. The shot had a great hole in the center; it was about nothing.

As always, I wondered, "Did it matter?" In this case it needed a horse or something. As I looked through the viewfinder at the perfectly framed composition, a large brown leaf dropped through my frame. No reflex would have been fast enough to catch it. The thought occurred to me that all of the images I like best have about them the immediacy of that falling leaf. Rarely is it due to stopped motion. Often it is a quality of light or a silence waiting to be broken. In yesterday's photo it was in the beckoning of an open door and the knowing eye of a watchful window. "The Falling Leaf." -an icon around which I can measure any photo? The name for an enterprise?

Just then a hawk swooped slowly across the passing swamp.  I had my long lens in place, but I knew I'd never catch him. Yes, the immediacy of the hawk's wing too, a falling leaf is only half the story, but I'm not so interested in shooting hawks.

MENTAL NOTE: How can I be more ready for lambs and hawks?

Yes, and there was a blue jay too, posing for me where he could soak in the midday sun. I wondered why the birds seemed so especially lively today. Spring began a week ago, but there beside the wall the sprouts had only just now nudged the ground aside. Of course, "hawk" rhymes with "stalk." By summer they would be stalks. Was that it, "Every photo should have about it the immediacy of a falling leaf or a sprouting stalk"?

Be sure to view this phot against a dark background and turn down the light beside you computer, and zoom in close.

Photo Zen

CLYDE BUTCHER: "The less you have to think, the better photographer you can become."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The scene doesn't exist; there is no tight cluster of trees blocking the way to this farmstead. There is a well-separated row of trees lining the country road where it winds past these ancient barns. Of course it's better not to think. The mind on vacation relishes pleasures that are invisible to the mind at work. That is the precondition to all of the methodology in the last three posts, and none of that methodology can really begin until thought engines are in cool idle, and eyes unprejudiced are open to delights.

I believe in practice; elements of technique that are not practiced into regularity and routine, will intrude. ...and in the right equipment; a new gadget, a broken widget, or a tripod that slips and slides is only overcome at mental cost. And perhaps along the same lines, I have come to value a practiced methodology of strategies that prevents the process of stalking the photo from becoming a distraction to itself.

Of course the most challenging distractions can only be overcome by spirit: appointments or deadlines to keep - threatening dangers of geography or weather - the call of a warm bed at a chilly 6 AM, coffee-less sunrise - the yearning at sunset to be at home having dinner & conversation with Jane. "The world is too much with us.... We lay waste our powers."

And so I attach this thought to one of those odd little compositions that keeps calling me back to it. I know some will find no pleasure in it. No matter. My eye was caught by... but, you see, one really can't meaningfully say what because it is a myriad that serendipped out of nowhere. It was the last shot of the day, and although camera and tripod were still on my shoulder, parts of me were already in the car recovering from the 4 mile trek. All at once the serendipity was just there, elbowing me, a cluster of small trees, a wall dividing a farmstead and blocking the way of my eye. I snapped the frame in spite of myself. Well, I actually snapped five, but none quite like this one. It was the very last shot of the day and automatically I had moved and zoomed through 4 shots and arrived at just this image that still pleases me.

I've been back since looking for the shot, thinking maybe it would be better with the warm glow and added definition right before sunset, but I've so far been unable to find this spot.

Photo blog: http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/

Stay Away

CONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI: There are no small parts, only small actors."
SCOTT McLEAY: "Each part of the image is equally important."
EDWARD WESTON: "Composition is the strongest way of seeing."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: After scouting and scoping Great Falls on Friday, I had my site and my time for a single falls shoot. I wanted to be as close to the foot of the falls as possible so I could shoot up across it to the dam station at the top of my frame. The spot I chose was a bit off the official trail and at the bottom of a steep embankment. It was at an the elbow where the river turned, creating a small pool. At the back edge of the pool a rock shelf had been left beneath an overhanging cliff. It provided plenty of room to move about and scope the falls in front of me for the best spot.The afternoon sun was sure to light the falls through much of the afternoon, but I wanted to be there still when the shadow began to creep upstream. I needed another clear day which came immediately on Saturday.

My friend, Louie, has written to suggest "serendipiting" as an additional step in my methodology. In fact, like most photographers, I acknowledge the importance of divine gifts. On the other hand, while one needs to be ready when the unexpected miracle appears, one can't consciously serendipit. And yet...

I had previously noted that if there was a decent wind to pick up the spray of the tumbling river, a portion of this site would be in periodic "rain." What I had not seen from my scoping perch above was that down on the ledge, that spray was continually creating rainbows. They'd come and go with the wind and change as the wind shifted. Sometimes it would be all bottom rainbow; sometimes the arch would only appear in spots and often it wouldn't be there at all for a few moments; every once in a while the wind would do something strange and reveal a complete arch of color from my level at the river up over the top of the falls and part way back down - serendipity! Well, not so fast.

I did all my usual shifting and zooming to identify and place the characters; to try to find the, "strongest way of seeing." For each possibility I shot many more images than normal; it was hard to tell if I'd just caught or just missed the rainbow. I also knew that by using the tripod, I'd be able to assemble a complete rainbow if I took enough shots.

But here's the thing: suddenly I was only half shooting falls and half shooting rainbow, and because I couldn't get them into a clear relationship, I wasn't shooting composition at all. In frustration, I positioned myself so the rainbow's brightest segment fell across a skeletal tree and made it fill the center of my frame. Simply plunking the image in the center of the frame risks discrediting the rest of the "canvas"; It's not the things that matter, but how they fit.

The shadow began creeping up the falls at 4:20, for the first time all afternoon, I ignored the rainbow. I took my last shots at 4:30. That evening not a single shot from the day's shoot pleased me. Such days are disappointing, and I easily give in to self-blame. In fact, it was a failure of concentration caused by the distraction of the rainbow and my determination to make this "gift" work.

Although I know I'll eventually return to shoot from the elbow pool, I chose a very different spot on my return on Monday (Amazing, another clear day!) When I arrived, I wasn't sure where I was going to shoot, but I decided to start above the falls. In contrast to the previous day, I was soon seeing many possibilities and my problem at home was how to choose from many options. Even shots that didn't work suggested fixes if conditions permit a similar shoot. Why had I previously avoided shooting here?

Perhaps I chose TODAY's image out of my yearning to be as close as possible to the edge of the danger. Or maybe getting this close provided the strongest contrast between the calm pool above and the menace ahead. In any case, to my eye all parts of this image are equally important.

Great Falls on the Housatonic, March, 2008

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Scouting & Scoping

On Friday I spent most of the day scouting Great Falls on the Housatonic River. I'd been here before, so I knew generally about the site, but I'd never seriously explored what was here. I consciously set my mind on scouting and only scouting the trails and roads around the falls. I went on foot. I'd resolved on scouting only because I didn't want to mix modes and slow myself down too much; it was a big and complicated site. The clearing sky doomed this resolution. Alain Briot recommends scouting with your camera put away. He even suggests making a rectangular viewer for studying composition. I often leave my camera in my backpack, but if I decide to take a shot, it will stay on the end of my tripod as I walk.

I started at the main entrance just above the power station dam and the falls. It is a very exciting place, especially swollen with spring rains. Getting near comes with a sense of danger. That and the thundering roar and motion of all that water rushing by can't help but to fill one with awe. The photographer must put all this aside or at least realize that if the goal of the photo is to convey that thrill of water thundering by, the danger, motion, and sound must be made visual. One changes the mood of movies by changing the sound track; photos are always silent.

I immediately liked the station house and equipment on the other side. I knew a channel was drawn off just by that building, and I could see water splashing from it as it moved toward the power turbines that I knew were in the valley below. I thought about ways to triangulate a composition between the distant station house and other objects near and far. I wondered how or if I could get over there on the catwalks by the station house and what the view might be from there. Yet the broad pool behind the dam that was immediately in front of me seemed so tranquil and flat next to this cacophony of motion. I was being pulled to have the whole experience of the falls in my face; I wanted to see that rushing water coming at me.

As a result, I spent less time here above the dam than I should have, but one can leave parts unexplored for a later visit. The trail begins right where the water spills over the level edge of the dam and snakes through the woods beside the waterfall. I followed it and noted several places where I might catch an unobstructed frontal view of the falls, but I knew that a good observation spot was ahead. I made a mental, scout's note to try these other spots some other time. It was only 10:30 in the morning, and the light was pretty good though it had begun to turn harsh. When I reached the better observation point my resolution failed, and I decided to scope. On my other visit I'd failed here, and I wanted to know if there was anything that worked. To scope it I needed to take out my camera.

The spot had some serious problems. It was a long arm of ledge that projected toward the river. A railing had been installed for safety. Even from the high spot the ugly railing would interfere. The ledge didn't project quite far enough, and scraggly trees blocked the view of the long dam with water spilling over. I moved way to the bottom back corner of the ledge where it projected farthest, but other elements were made worse. Each time I moved I reset my tripod. This is fine on level terrain and where the height of the lens from the ground is not sensitive. Here, scoping with the tripod was foolish!

Scoping requires freedom. In tight, uneven terrain such as this the tripod encumbers imagination. Every little movement left, right, up, down changes the relationship of things. This is the time to take the camera in hand, and try any likely angle. Don't shoot, just scope. With the camera off the tripod I could lean over the railing and see beyond the trees. From there one pine caught the light nicely and I liked the way its scraggly appearance fit the tenuousness of life on the edge of that great falls. I had made a number of exposures already, telling myself I wanted to remember the light, that it would be better later. They were not "real" shots, but the pine nudged me from scoping to shooting.

The light was at least acceptable. The elements of my composition (members of the cast) were clear. The main line of tension was between the tree and the station house with a contrary motion of the water over the dam and down the falls between. I made seventeen exposures once I was seriously shooting. Five were vertical. I experimented with pushing the tree and station up into the corners of my frame by zooming in and thus making the falls larger. I zoomed out letting the station stand clear of the corner and including more of the falls below. In each shot I was careful to catch enough foreground to establish my place. Later, at home, the final choice was between this image and two similar vertical shots. Since this image will be viewed on computer screens, I chose the horizontal. I also liked the way the foreground makes a little hill in the horizontal version.

I let myself move to scoping here because it was early, and I had time for lots of further scouting. By the time I made it back here it was 2 PM and I had scouted the entire opposite bank and made my way to the station house and the power company channel. I'd even stopped a couple of time for prelim "scoping" shots and one other serious shoot. Returning here at 2 PM, I was surprised to find the scraggly little pine that had "made" my earlier shots, no longer looking the same. The branches whose darkness stand out in this shot had become front-lit by 2PM. The shot I'd taken at 10 was the right one. Perhaps the rule should be that when the light is right it's always time to shoot.

My hunch was there would be a gorgeous, golden glow at sunset, but that was three hours away and I'd already been scouting and scoping for 4 hours. Had I been closer to home, I'd have come back later, but the round trip was a bit over an hour. All shoots are driven by weather and light. Pacing and timing are everything.

Spring Water

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Scouting - I've been thinking lately about my shooting methodology.  In the four years since I've returned to shooting, I find I have unconsciously developed patterns - strategies - processes for finding images. These work for me; they may not work for anyone else. Identifying the things I do over and over, putting words around them, and understanding how & why they work allows me to control, evaluate, and improvise on the processes. Maybe I'll also find tiny insights into how my conscious and unconscious mind finds flat images amid space.

To break these processes into three steps is to be too precise. Sometimes two or all three steps occur together, and sometimes a good image is there when I am doing nothing.  However, at least for the moment, I identify three. How nice that they all begin with "S":
1. scouting
2. scoping
3. shooting

Today I was mostly scouting. On such days my camera may not even be out. Today it was, and I shot more than I should have, but really I was following new trails, trying to get the lay of the land, seeing where I wanted to get and trying to get there to see what I could see once I was there. Once I actively stopped, scoped and shot, but mostly I was scouting.

I'm always scouting for new sites, places that make me eager to shoot and sometimes I just drive the back roads within roughly a 60 minute radius of home. I know, it's not the green thing to do, but this drive is essential to the end goal of photographing the place I live. I like the back roads, partly because I can dawdle a bit, but also because I'm often trying to catch glimpses of the vanishing past, or perhaps the truth is I'd rather listen to birds and streams than cars. Of course step 3, shooting, will require me to forget the stream and the bird sounds.

Scouting can also occur on foot along trails or roads, even some I've walked dozens of times. Returning, I look for new stops along the way, places to explore. If I meet people I sometimes get new tips, new access, and even bits of folk lore and history. Often I get no photos. On a four or five mile loop there can be lots of nooks and crannies in the muffin.  Of course, to find new muffins I have to get back in the car.  I don't enjoy being in the car; I'd rather be out in the field being "productive," but I do enjoy the adventure of coming on new surprises.

Like all aspects of my photography, scouting is controlled by the weather, the light, and the seasons. For the past few weeks we've had rains that have finally washed the last bits of snow from the forests. The streams are gushing and everything suggests this is the time to shoot water sites. Except in Collinsville, shooting has been in fits and starts because for all other sites I'm pretty much in scouting mode. While scouting Kent Falls for shots this week I liked the old leaves that had settled into rock pools beside the falls. The leaves have darkened, thinned, begun to dissolve back into earth, a sure sign that spring can not be too far. I shot this photo there, but really I was just scouting. I moved on to other sites to see what things looked like with the rivers and streams gushing. My focus never reached the intensity it does when shooting.

Namelessness

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: To go nameless is to accept the will or whim of the viewer, to permit viewers to rampage recklessly, trampling my image with evocations of their own.

The photographer's defense is in images that can counter that recklessness; that can strongly "allude to things or states of being" relying on little more than color, form, and texture. Add a name to this image and it is immediately less than it might otherwise be. Once the wind has stilled, the allusive power of light is subsumed in wood siding.

Concourses of TIme

In Time

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: When did I first become a time traveler? I must have been one at about age 6 when I noticed chips on the door frame of my bedroom. New York City apartments sometimes pass through many tenancies. The landlords' painters who repaint for each new tenant have a certain reputation; the chips were deep, the layers clearly defined. Each chip revealed a multi-colored stratification of paint layers, each a key into to a lost space - forgotten dynasties had thrived in my room, had occupied the places of my parents and family and me. From the number of different colors there might have been 15 or 20 such reincarnations of my space. Who were these people and what had become of them? What had happened where I stood?

At age 6, to my tiny years, the immensity of those 15 or 20 occupancies seemed as beyond reach as the moon and endlessly intriguing. Even then I felt charged by vague tendons through which the past grips the present.

Water Power

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - Of course it is water that has taken me to Collinsville. Large snowfalls have been followed by drenching rains, and much of Connecticut has been under flood watches and warnings for the past few days. Route 7 is under water just where route 7 always goes under water. Simsbury is threatened where SImsbury is always threatened, and it all gives the news channels much to yack at. Even the little river across from my house is raging, and the dirt road we live on is all muddy and rutted - four-wheel-drive advised.

The mystery of water that turns the planet with its constant motion. Water built the Collins Co. and then destroyed it, and water continues to flow through the channels between and under the buildings - channels where the water was powerful enough to turn great shafts that transmitted energy up several floors and along banks of machinery. Engines whirred and made the walls rumble. Once it was all water-powered, and even now there is only one large smoke stack. It has become a venerable place of transformations.

Manufractured in the U.S.A.

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - One can't get much closer to the roots of the American manufacturing tradition than to spend some time in Collinsville, CT. The Collins Company was founded in 1826 to make axes to carve the future. That was the year Sam Collins purchased a sawmill where the Farmington River bends and passes through a narrow gorge. Soon he was not only manufacturing axes but financing homes for workers and running the bank which financed much else. In 1836 Collins Co. opened the first Congregational Church in town, and over the years Sam Collins bought out a drug store and two hotels to prevent alcohol from being sold in Collinville. The Collins Co. offered more than a job; it offered a way of life.

Collins axes were known for high quality and were exported around the world and are still sought today. Eventually the the Collins Company made a variety of other hardware products. It reached its peak in WWII but never transitioned for peacetime. When the great floods of 1955 washed through town there was considerable damage from which the company never recovered. It ceased operations in 1966. The factories as they existed after 1955 are still intact. However, after the floods of 1955 the town was sliced by a new state road that speeds traffic through town right where the bend in the river was prettiest and the old road had shyly hugged the cliff. The old rail line that once hustled hardware to the corners of the globe is now a bike trail.

Shadow and Light

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: After living with this image since last fall, my strongest impulse is to want to go back to Straight Farm to find other angles that will solve problems and make better use of what was best there. Alas, the likelihood that such an opportunity will come again is low, nor am I totally displeased with the composition.

Tiffany Autumn

EDWARD STEICHEN: "The photographer establishes a relationship, an intimate relationship between himself and whatever he is photographing whether it's a can of beans, a landscape, or Greta Garbo."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I confess it. My spirit has begun to yearn for different colors. I woke at 6:15 this morning and was surprised by the strength of last night's snow. It was a moderately adhesive snow that clumped on the hemlocks and made fish scales on the windward sides of the oak trunks. Had I secretly hoped for the snow to peter out as it had appeared it would the evening before?

I rolled over and nudged my alarm ahead, but duty pushed me out from the warmth of our bed an hour later. Surely there was much that should have captivated my eye, but I was home by 10. It is the depth of winter, and my spirit is ready for spring, its only refuge, this fin de siécle photo from last autumn.

Yesterday's Spring Challenge wafted a number of zephyrs my way and I return zephyrs to Wendy, Judy, Ed, Rosemary, and Garl. Among their contributions were:
"Hokey Pokey"
The hideously puntischievous, "Dolly Lama Yoga Studio"
"Photography for Dummies" to which was appended, "no reflection on your photo... pun inadvertent."
"Slightly Less Creepy When Headless"
"Invitation to a Beheading"
"Improv"

Spring Challenge 2

Extra zephyrs were sent today to Sam and Frances for naming yesterday's TODAY'S. Here are some of the names received:
"Five O'Clock Shadow"
"Imprisoned Desire"
"Back Up Around"
"Academic Chair Slats through a Wineglass"

Francis also wants to know if this is my "Spring Puzzler."

The shot below was taken in July of 2004 before I got my first digital SLR. Once again, I invite you to win a zephyr by submitting one or more names for the photo. Names are still welcome for the previous photo also.

SPRING CHALLENGE:
After the last post, several readers, among them my brother, requested I shoot warmer weather. Sadly, tonight the weatherman has given us twelve degrees and snow by tomorrow evening. If I could paint, I'd paint you spring. Since I take photos, I offer you this warming "Spring Challenge."

Long ago my friend Bob Fitterman and I sometimes debated issues related to the naming of works of art. To what extent are we bound when a composer names his piece of music "Spring Rhapsody," to hear spring in the music? To what extent are we bound when a painter dabs three brush strokes on his canvas and calls it "Boats at Sea," to try to find boats at sea? Should visual works or musical works come with titles that may limit, focus, or alter the range of responses that may be drawn from solely visual or sound cues?

THE CHALLENGE: Whatever thoughts you may have regarding such naming, I invite you to submit names for this photo that will alter how it is viewed. Names received from Florida residents will be granted double warmth as they seem most in need. This is a progressive blog.

Hilside Farm Blizzard

Hillside Farm: Study in White

NOTE: There is a second row of hills visible in this image. If you only see a single row of hills you may find it helpful to lower lights adjacent to your monitor.

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: At any other time of year the ground would have been gold or green, the roofs black, and the sky would have been the brightest thing in the scene. Snow is the friend of those who would photograph landscapes; it is the equalizer that rebalances tonalities allowing ground and sky to be more easily bound into a single composition. No more sport jackets with contrasting pants.

Once again a cluster of birches catches the eye. I liked the way the stream, which flows in a cleft of brown brambles and brush, seemed to set apart pillows of white that echo the white roofs of the barns. The axis of the barns leads to a distant path, but the pattern of the pillows draws the eye to the distant fields, especially the one in the center with two large trees.

We are looking at Hillside Farmstead the other way round. Yesterday's image looked up along the southwest facade. TODAY'S looks down on the northeast facade and out. Perhaps the dialogue of the birch cluster and the window forms a kind of musical counterpoint to the underlying structure of the image? They are certainly first-rate secondary characters, and it is the birch, if anyone, that yearns for what might be beyond the second range of hills.

Hillside Gabling

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: None of the buildings of Hillside Farmstead is spectacular in itself, but the main hay barn (at the top in this photo) has been magnificently prolific in sprouting new outbuildings that cataract down the hillside in two main branches. The architect in me revels in the spaces created at every sprouting and in the turning and twisting of the gables, and everything is well-aged. It is a farmstead that asks to be photographed.

Although I have been shooting here since last spring, I've never shot this face of the complex. In spring and summer the sun only reaches here in mid-morning and at a steep angle. Most of my trips here then are to catch the gorgeous evening light that bathes the other side of these buildings (1.) (2.) (3.) (4.)

There is a reason this is called "Hillside Farm," and the natural thing to do is to compose to maximize the buildings' ascent of the slope. As I was interested in the various spaces created, I wanted to stay fairly close in, but I also wanted to include as many of the rich architectural forms and textures as I could. The shorter the lens used, the more distant the buildings, the less likely the eye will be drawn into exploring the yards. Zoom or move in too far and you see fewer buildings. This shot can be planned with complete rationality.

Now that this shot is done, I can figure out how to shoot 50 more original images of this "shade" side of the buildings. I'll keep count.

Hillside Farm with Birches

EDWARD STEICHEN: "The photographer establishes a relationship, an intimate relationship between himself and whatever he is photographing whether it's a can of beans, a landscape, or Greta Garbo."
MINOR WHITE: "Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: There are times when an image seems to grab me from the corner of my eye and I know I have to shoot it. Certainly it shouldn't have happened just at this moment. A few moments earlier I had abandoned a good shot as hopeless. Not only had the snow become merciless, but my car was parked smack at the climax of the image.

It's sometimes difficult to find the space where pictures start to happen, nor can I quite say what happens when I enter that space. Until then the elements of the landscape are parts to a jigsaw puzzle that won't go together. Then suddenly ideas are plentiful; every prospect suggests multiple gestalts. I had climbed the hill with the intention of leaving, but once at the car, the landscape was so suddenly rearranged that new compositions were everywhere. Every shot had to be quick - aimed, focused, and shot in an instant in order to get the lens cap back on before it got wet, but I knew I was already in motion toward moving the car and returning to the bottom of the hill to find the good angle again.

And so there's no good reason why this shot should have grabbed just as I started the trek back down. I was in motion to a new site for one final shot. The snow was at its worst. I'd been shooting for 4 hours with good results. No good reason! I was looking the other way, but suddenly, there at my left ear were these birches and this oddly proportioned barn and so many wonderful textures. It probably shouldn't work at all with the barns just sitting there right in the middle, but it insisted on having its picture taken. I snapped two images and the memory card was filled.

Baldwin Hill Orchard 1

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I spoke with the owners of these orchards last spring, and they called me when the trees were in blossom, but no matter what I did, the only shots that seemed to work were close-ups; I wanted to catch the patterns of the rows of trees.

As earlier noted, snow changes everything. The problem I had in the spring was finding enough contrast between the ground and the trunks of the trees so as to make their pattern clear. Finding this spot where the land dipped out of sight was a bonus. Tomorrow new snow is expected. The weatherman said perhaps as much as ten inches. There are some other stops I'd like to make up here on the top of Baldwin Hill as the snow tapers off. Then again, the snow's not supposed to stop until Saturday morning, and the roads up here are steep.